Seattle Seahawks Football Team

No one said it would be that easy, at least not publicly. Seattle Seahawks Coach Pete Carroll and his players spent two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl lauding the Denver Broncos, quarterback Peyton Manning and their seemingly unstoppable offense. However, privately Carroll and his players and staff believed a rout of the Broncos was possible. Actually, probable. On Sunday, in front of 85,529 at MetLife Stadium, the Seahawks made it happen, dominating Manning and the Broncos in every phase in a 43-8 victory.

They called him Ground Chuck. They called his football the School of Hard Knox. They said he played football 10 yards at a time, the way sandhogs built tunnels under rivers. Or miners dug coal. They recommended his teams wear lanterns and carry canaries. They called his team the Seahawks, but the wise guys said they should be called the Moles. They got touchdowns the way gophers get plants. But he did more with less than anyone who ever coached the game.

The unraveling started when Omaha became Whoa-maha! The Denver Broncos' first snap of Super Bowl XLVIII sailed high over the right shoulder of Peyton Manning, and thus began the most monstrously disastrous game of his illustrious football career. Manning sat at an interview podium Sunday night and, his shoulders slumping under the weight of a 43-8 loss to Seattle, tried to wrap his head around how such a big game could go wrong so quickly. That errant snap was recovered by the Broncos in the end zone for a safety a mere 12 seconds into the game, the fastest score in Super Bowl history.

These are the agonizing days Kenny Easley had hoped would never come. "You wake up hurting, you go through the day hurting, you go to bed hurting and you wake up the next morning and you're still hurting," he said. "It seems like it never goes away. It gets to be very disheartening and very frustrating." His suffering is the result of a June 8 kidney transplant in Seattle, where for seven years Easley was an outstanding safety for the Seahawks.

The National Football League has explicit procedures for franchise relocation, but for the right amount of money, those guidelines can--and have--been overlooked. The Los Angeles Rams initially failed to meet NFL guidelines in their proposed move to St. Louis, but after team President John Shaw talked about financial terms with league officials, and the Rams agreed to pay a $29-million relocation fee, league owners agreed to let them go.

Quarterback Mark Rypien of the Washington Redskins, most valuable player in the Super Bowl, signed a contract Tuesday and will join the team for Sunday's exhibition against the San Francisco 49ers in London. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Rypien was seeking $3.7 million per year, a figure that would put him among the NFL's five top-paid quarterbacks. Washington was offering $12 million over four years.

The more I hear from NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, the more I am convinced that the football team presently known as the Seattle Seahawks will never play a down here. Tagliabue's in-writing promise to the people of Cleveland to get them a team, still called Browns, while permitting Art Modell's current personnel to move to Baltimore, can be perceived as a promise to Los Angeles.

Oooh, not this place again . . . Of all the possible venues for the Raiders' most important game, they get this house of horrors where they have been used as a punching bag for most of the decade. They're 1-6 since Chuck Knox arrived here in 1983, and their misadventures have been landmarks in their decline. Here's how it has been, game by grisly game: 1983--Seahawks 38, Raiders 36. Quarterback Jim Zorn goes four for 16 . . .

Los Angeles has become an unwitting pawn in an intense chess game between the Seattle Seahawks and Washington's King County. Or Los Angeles is about to get another professional football team. These conflicting news bulletins surfaced almost hourly Thursday, saying the Seahawks, who are prepared to break their Kingdome lease, are leaving Seattle for Los Angeles, or--hold on--the Seahawks are staying in Seattle.

Chicago Bears defensive end and resident philosopher Alex Brown reflected on the place Sunday's 27-24 overtime victory over the Seattle Seahawks might warrant in team annals. "This game right here, it'll be an instant classic," Brown said after the NFC semifinal. "Great game. Somebody has to win and lose, and unfortunately ... " Brown hesitated. There are limits to sportsmanship. "No, fortunately, Seattle had to lose."

The Seattle Seahawks' secondary has been chewed up because of injuries, but somehow it keeps getting the job done. Cornerbacks Kelly Herndon (broken ankle), Jimmy Williams (knee sprain) and Marcus Trufant (ankle sprain) will not play against the Chicago Bears on Sunday, leaving Seattle with the same makeshift secondary that was effective in Saturday's wild-card victory over Dallas.

OK, Seahawks, you got your wish. You wanted to be acknowledged as more than just an afterthought? Here's the truth: Super Bowl XL was about the Seahawks. It was about their blunders, their bad breaks, their inability to win a game that should have belonged to them but instead will go down as Pittsburgh 21, Seattle 10. "[The Steelers] played well," Seattle receiver Bobby Engram said. "You have to give them credit. But I don't think we played up to our full potential."

Moments after the game ended, so did Jerome Bettis' career. The Pittsburgh running back announced that he was retiring after 13 seasons, having finally reached football's mountaintop. "I don't think you could have scripted it any better," he said of finishing his career with a Super Bowl victory in his hometown. "I think the script right now, if somebody took it to Hollywood, they will turn it down because they'd say that it couldn't happen. It's been an incredible ride. It's been amazing."

"Here's one we could have done at Super Bowl I!" shouted 62-year-old Mick Jagger on the evening of Feb. 5, 2006, as the Rolling Stones launched into "Satisfaction," a song older than anyone on the playing rosters of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks and even the Super Bowl, which debuted 39 years ago. This raises a few immediate points: 1) Bart Starr, the winning quarterback in Super Bowl I, was on hand again to participate in the coin toss that preceded Sunday's Super Bowl XL.

Mike Holmgren wanted total control. The Seattle Seahawks gave it to him, not to mention $4 million a year, to become their coach and general manager Friday. Holmgren got an eight-year contract that reportedly will pay him $4 million a season, making him the highest-paid coach in the NFL. George Seifert will be paid $2.5 million to coach the Carolina Panthers. The Seahawks, a franchise that has missed the playoffs for 10 seasons in a row, got their man and they paid a high price for him.

He had caught merely seven passes this season, none for a touchdown, but St. Louis tight end Cameron Cleeland felt eerily calm when he grabbed the pass that launched the Rams to the second round of the playoffs. "It's one of those plays you're waiting your whole entire life to make," he said. "I practiced it 100,000 times as a kid. And I lead the league in practice-Friday TDs."

The Pittsburgh Steelers are so much better than the Seattle Seahawks this year that the only reason to play today's game is to avoid disappointing the throngs of party-goers who have turned the Super Bowl into an unofficial national holiday. At the moment, the one-sided nature of this game isn't commonly realized because Pittsburgh was seeded sixth among AFC teams this season whereas Seattle was clearly No. 1 in the NFC. Yet those rankings are misleading, as rankings often are.

STEELER RUN OFFENSE VS. SEAHAWK RUN DEFENSE * The Steelers do a great job of taking what a defense gives them. Pittsburgh throws when the safeties come up and runs when the safeties drop back. Speedy Willie Parker will get most of the carries, but he's more susceptible to fumbles than Jerome Bettis (his turnover at Indianapolis notwithstanding). Bettis will get the ball around the goal line, and/or if Pittsburgh builds a second-half lead and needs to burn the clock.